Syrian refugees walk next of their tents at a small refugee camp, in Ketermaya village southeast of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday. Syria warned Lebanon today that it may attack if its neighbor continues to provide safe haven for rebels fighting in Syria's two-year-old civil war.

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Syria’s state news agency warned Lebanon today that it may attack if its neighbor continues to provide safe haven for rebels fighting in Syria’s two-year-old civil war. The threat comes as concerns intensify about the conflict's divisive impact on Lebanon's Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities, which maintain an uneasy coexistence.

"Syriaexpects the Lebanese side to prevent these armed terrorist groups from using the borders as a crossing point, because they target Syrian people and are violating Syrian sovereignty," a diplomatic cable from the Syrian foreign ministry to its Lebanese counterpart said, Reuters reports.

"We need help. Lebanon is bearing the burden of the events in Syria," Mikati said in a plea for Arab states to contribute assistance and aid. Lebanon has requested $370 million to help the government and international agencies meet refugees' needs.

But Lebanon’s concerns go beyond the refugee crisis. It fought its own 15-year civil war that ended in the 1990s, and now observers fear the violence next door may be exacerbating long-running tensions between Christians, Druze, and Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

Many Lebanese Sunnis identify closely with the mostly Sunni rebels fighting against the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite. At the same time they feel deprived, forsaken by the state and subjugated by other factions. Building off this anger and inspired by the gains of Syria’s rebels, they have become more vocally hostile toward Hezbollah, the Shiite party; the government, dominated by Hezbollah; and the Syrian regime.

“I believe Sunnis are coming out of chains,” said Omar Bakri, a radical Sunni cleric who lives in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, after Beirut. “The blood of the innocents in Lebanon and Syria, we are not going to let it go without accountability.”

Any kind of cross-border attack, whether or not it is instigated by the Syrian government, could tip Lebanon into a larger conflict, according to the Times.

“Lebanon is already divided and it is just waiting for a spark, nothing more,” Bilal Masri, a Sunni militia leader, told the Times.